Salience Labs

Salience Labs develops silicon photonics-based optical switches for AI data centres, enabling all-optical connectivity between compute nodes to overcome data-movement bottlenecks. Spun out from the University of Oxford and University of Munster in 2021, the company was co-founded by Vaysh Kewada, Johannes Feldmann, Harish Bhaskaran, and Wolfram Pernice. Its OC-32M all-optical switch delivers 10ns latency (20x lower than electronic alternatives) at under 1W per port, with 32-, 64-, and 128-port variants in development. Salience has raised $88M to date, including a $30M Series A led by Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund. The company was ranked #28 in Sifted's AI 100 and #2 in Hardware. It is headquartered in Oxford with an office in San Jose.